DINOSAURS

By the time the band played the 50th anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge, Melton recalls, "People started actually looking at us as some kind of civic representation." Further explaining, "It really was the best band I was in and that's no bullshit. We had a philosophy that if we weren't doing it for fun we shouldn't be doing it. It wasn't a serious project. When it got to resembling work, we stopped doing it, and that wasn't until much later, after Papa John died. Then it was a feeling of we're doing this for a living or to make money. It was like we were forcing it and it is not that we didn't take some terrific guys out on the road with us. We took Jerry Miller and David LaFlamme, and I always loved playing with both of them."

It's no wonder that Melton recalls the band as the best he was in, it contained members from the cream of 60s Bay Area bands; Spencer Dryden from Jefferson Airplane and the New Riders of the Purple Sage, Peter Albin from Big Brother and the Holding Compnay, John Cipollina from Quicksilver Messenger Service. Initially Robert Hunter was the Grateful Dead connection and after about two years he was replaced by Merl Saunders. When Cipollina passed away in 1989 Papa John Creach, who is also now deceased joined the ranks, and as Melton mentioned both Jerry Miller (Moby Grape) and David LaFlamme (It's a Beautiful Day) played with them for a short period of time.

Like many of the good things in life, the band formed pretty much by accident in July 1982. Dinosaurs played around 130 shows until they called it quits in June of 1996. Melton and Albin had known each other for many years and still play together on a regular basis. In fact, all the members had many years of high profile experience, but more than that they didn't bring an attitude with them. Melton recalls the early days, "I was on the board of directors of this organization called The Freedom Foundation which met inside the San Quentin State Prison. The chairman of the organization was this guy called Dennis Jones who was doing life for three counts of conspiracy to commit murder - he is out now. Well, he was promoting concerts at the time, and Spencer was also on the board of directors along with Norton Buffalo. Peter and I had a trio and we booked ourselves a gig on the Russian River, this was 1982 and our drummer fell out, so I asked Spencer if he still played as he'd been half managing the New Riders. He said sure." It was at this show that the "Dinosaur" quip came and afterwards they decided that what they had was probably part of some bigger idea or concept. "When we got back we called Cipollina to see what he was doing." John, of course was in a half dozen bands at the time and as Melton jokingly remembers "The offer to be in another band was more than attractive to him, so he joined up." By the time they played their second gig things were beginning to take shape. "We booked ourselves as a quartet and we called ourselves Dinosaurs, just Dinosaurs. There never was a "the" in front of the name." Manager Steve Keyser elaborates "Barry pointed out that there were a lot of Dinosaurs and it would be very presumptuous to say that they were "The Dinosaurs." There were many other Dinosaurs, and one of the nice things about about their live shows was they would do whatever they could to get other "Dinosaurs" to sit in, which happened a lot." In fact, it happened right from the first show! Melton takes up the story again. "I wrote up a press release for a gig at the Old Waldorf, Alton Kelly did up a poster. "We did it the old way. We went through the city and distributed the posters and the first night we played tons of people showed up. It sold out. A lot of our musical contemporaries showed up, Bob Hunter among them. Garcia was there but didn't play. Hunter jumps up on stage and starts playing harmonica." Hunter ended up hanging around after the show and one thing led to another and he joined the band. Melton, Cipollina, Dryden, Albin and Hunter were the first official line-up of the band. "It lasted about a year and it was really kind of successful on a local level" says Melton adding "I don't know if we wanted to do anything with it or not. We played LA, Phoenix, Denver, Santa Fe, Portland, and Seattle."

The band did actually make one or two forays to the East Coast but as Albin remembers "We didn't play that much really. There were so many off-shoot bands. Spencer didn't want to play unless it was an "event". he wanted to make it a special kind of thing every time we played. By 1987 Big Brother had gotten together so there was a bit of a conflict sometimes." Dinosaurs played mostly small theaters amd larger clubs but outside of the Bay Area they didn't really have that big a draw which made it difficult. "We had the one album on Relix" recalls Albin. "They didn't promote it and neither did we." Melton, however sees it a little differently, "It was harder for us to play a lot because we decided to do the posters, the light shows and all that other good stuff which was kind of smart." But of course, concurrently there were off-shoot bands, Fish and Chip, The Melton, Cipollina, Saunders Band that tended to play smaller clubs. They also played with a variety of other folks including Novato Frank, and of course Cipollina was in Terry and the Pirates (another much underrated band) and the early configuration of jam favorites Zero, as well as Problem Child, San Francisco All-Stars and Thunder & Lightning.

But despite some minor gripes the reality was Dinosaurs, as Melton explains "was never meant to be a commercial enterprise" and on that level one simply cannot argue with their level of success! Keyser concludes "The whole idea of the band was for it to be music of the moment... to play what you feel at that moment which is why they got into some long extended jams. It didn't have the polish that some other bands had but it had more of a warmth and feeling of what was going on at the time. I regret that they didn't get a bit more exposure and recognition for what they did. They were unique in that they represented that 1965 to 1972 classic San Francisco era as good as or better than any other band in as much as they were an amalgamation of players." Keyser did, however, understand their philosophy "They clearly were not a commercial project, it was just music for the love of it. It was never about the money, it was never about success which is a bit frustrating to me as a manager, but I understood and went along with it."

One might reasonably argue that the band was a true jamband long before the phrase had ever been coined as it was always five or six musicians from various bands jamming. Keyser further states, "They loved the music and up until John died they were playing the same music" says Keyser. Of course, that low-key aspect in the end was somewhat detrimental as Albin reflects, "When we first started as Dinosaurs we definitely had a following with Dead Heads but when they realized we were playing the same songs over and over again they stopped coming. We did the same set all the time. Barry didn't want to do a set list, he refused saying that every audience was different and that he had to feel out the audience and then pick the song, well he picked the same songs all the time! We only rehearsed about twice and with Bob Hunter we really needed to rehearse. Sometimes on stage with Hunter he would start a song that we that we had never heard. He wouldn't even say what key it was in, what the tempo was or the feel was. He would just start a song and just go for it. In a way I liked that kind of concept but for putting out recordings it just didn't work."

Of course, the band suffered a major tragedy when John Cipollina passed away in 1989. John with his tenacious and wild playing was a huge part of their sound. Initially Melton recalled that they felt like packing it in. "When John died I was devastated" he recalls, "John and I were really tight. We had Fish and Chip, Fish Stu, The Melton, Cipollina, Saunders Band, we played with Novato Frank. After John died we didn't play any dates for a while and then Merl said 'I'm really tight with Papa John Creach, why don't we book a date and try it.' I remember we had some rehearsals at Merl's and it changed it, and it didn't change it because Papa John was just as much a madman wailing away on the violin as John was on guitar. It was neat having him in the band... what an incredibly up guy, a really nice man and his wife Gretchen was a really nice person. It was special and it was a replacement that [the] audience immediately accepted, not that there could ever be a replacement for John, but lets face it there was no denying John Creach was a dinosaur!"

And even though the dynamic of the band changed with the arrival [of] Papa John the spirit and vibe was intact and they continued to make some great music until, sadly, Papa John passed on and some of that music is represented on this set.

Many fans and members of the band felt that the lone album they recorded, presented here as disc one never quite captured the true power and intensity of the band. Melton went as far as saying "There's a Dinosaurs bootleg that was better than the album we recorded." Even though most of these comments are true there's still some good material on the disc. Hunter had already left the band but he returned to the fold to contribute to the stunning "Who Makes the Moves?" and "Resurrection Rag." Melton's arrangement of the traditional "Butcher's Boy" is also notable as are the two live tracks, the slow burning soul grooves of Merl Saunders singing Nina Simone's "Do I Move you" and the blistering "Mona" which focusses on the interplay between Cipollina and Melton. In this reissue package the original album is bolstered by two previously unreleased tracks which are outtakes from the original sessions. Both are by the late Cipollina, "Honky Tonk Jekyll and Hyde," a song that John played in a number of his "many" bands and the quirky "Overnight" which offers a glimpse at John's oddball perhaps twisted sense of humor. The title of the set "Friends of Extinction" is also the original title that Cipollina had wanted to use. Out of respect for the original producers of the album, neither of whom could voice their opinions at the time of this reissue, John obviously because he is sadly no longer with us and Merl because he is unable to speak due to having suffered from a stroke, the original running order of the album is left intact, although Melton did eventually concur that my take of switching "Who Makes the Moves?" and "Lay Back Baby" was probably a better choice. "You're probably more right on that as we used to open the shows with "Who Makes the Moves?""

Dryden remembers that he wanted to do a live album in its entirety but it was a struggle getting just the two tracks on the album. He says, "There were two track board tapes that I felt were more representative of the band than the album. There were just all kinds of good stuff that we could have used." Albin says "the studio recording we did was okay but we were better live." Of course, given the band's lack of commercial aspirations when it came time to to do a record, funds were limited. Almost everyone in retrospect agrees with Dryden's idea that they should have recorded the entire thing live. Melton says "We made a half serious attempt because we figured we didn't really have enough money to make a really good record. Merl and John produced it because the rest of us had other stuff we had to do."

Disc two of this set is here to support the theory that the band was better enjoyed in a live format. It is a previously unreleased collection of concert material that's intended to give a cross-section of music that the band made covering the different line-ups and members. It features contributions from all the key members, as well as a few guests. These tracks were culled from many performances and have been chosen based on performance and sound quality. There were some other great performances that truly reflect the band's stature as a live unit, but due to uneven mixes, tuning and other technical glitches they were unable to be used. Sure, even here there are a few warts but there's also some superb music that captures the essence and spirit of the band. "I'm pretty excited about the release," says Melton adding "it contains some of my best ever guitar playing." In fact the jam-heavy tracks such as "The Dance" and "Closer" really are testaments to that fact. The latter in typical fashion finds Robbie Hoddinott of Kingfish wandering onstage midway through and adding a third guitar to the sonic onslaught of Cipollina and Melton. And yes, there's the majestic Papa John fiddle work on the mellower "I Can't Get Started With You," and Kathi McDonald's ballsy duet with Pete Albin on the Big Brother chestnut "Blind Man".

These two discs serve to remind one that Dinosaurs despite not being a commercial enterprise made some great music that as Keyser said in many ways exemplifies the classic San Francisco sound as good as or better than anyone else. Enjoy!